Maternal mortality rates rose across 20 years in the United States while Roe v. Wade forced states to legalize killing unborn babies in abortions up to viability, according to a new study.
Published Monday in the Journal for the American Medical Association, the study examined data from all 50 states between 1999 and 2019 and found increases in maternal mortality rates, especially among American Indian, Alaska Native and Black American women.
Notably, the increases occurred both in pro-life states, including Louisiana, Georgia, Texas and Indiana, and pro-abortion states, including Illinois, Rhode Island and New Jersey. And some of the sharpest increases occurred among Black women, the racial group that also has the highest abortion rate.
Dr. Greg Roth, a cardiologist, professor of medicine and researcher at the University of Washington, said they did not study the causes of death, meaning some may not have been pregnancy-related. The study included women who died while pregnant or up to one year after giving birth, according to the Missouri Independent.
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Here’s more from the report:
The authors said there is incomplete data around causes of death that were unable to be analyzed for this study, and a checkbox indicating the person was recently pregnant was added at different times in various states over the course of a decade.
Despite those factors, Roth said even after every state included the checkbox on death certificates, the trends continued to go up. Roth said there is early data indicating the number of deaths increased even more throughout the pandemic.
Across the 20-year span, there was a 93-percent increase in maternal mortality rates among Black Americans in Louisiana, New Jersey, Georgia, Arkansas and Texas, according to the study. Another sharp increase (162 percent) occurred among Indigenous people in Florida, Kansas, Illinois, Rhode Island and Wisconsin, the researchers found.
And in Indiana, Minnesota, Georgia, Tennessee and Illinois, the maternal mortality rate doubled among Hispanic women across 20 years, according to the study.
Overall, the states with the lowest maternal mortality rates in 2019 were Oregon, Hawaii, Colorado, Illinois, Wisconsin, Delaware, Vermont and Rhode Island, researchers said.
Dr. Allison Bryant, an OB-GYN for Mass General Brigham in Massachusetts who participated in the research, claimed pro-life laws may cause the numbers to rise even more.
But data contradicts her predictions.
Last year, Dr. Monique Chireau Wubbenhorst, a senior research associate at the DeNicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame and a board-certified OB-GYN, told a U.S. House committee that legalized abortion does not help reduce maternal mortality. On the contrary, countries with pro-life laws have some of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world, she said.
“… until recently in countries where abortion was criminalized and prohibited, I’m thinking particularly of Chile, Ireland and, I think, Cyprus had the lowest rates of maternal mortality in the world. For several years consecutively, Ireland had zero maternal mortality at a time when abortion was completely illegal,” Wubbenhorst said at the time.
Many studies suggest the widespread legalization and availability of elective abortions harm women as well as their unborn babies. In a column at The Federalist in October, Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, a radiology specialist in Florida, said some researchers have found that abortions are more dangerous than childbirth for mothers.
Pro-life laws save lives: mothers and babies. In Texas alone, a new study by Johns Hopkins found that nearly 10,000 more babies were born after its heartbeat law went into effect in 2021. In the past year since the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling, researchers believe tens of thousands more babies also have been saved.
Meanwhile, there have not been any reports of pregnant mothers dying because of pro-life laws. Every abortion ban or restriction includes clear language that protects pregnant mothers as well as their unborn babies. Pro-life laws include exceptions to save the life of the mother and allow miscarriage care.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade will lead to more lives being saved – a fact that abortion activists want Americans to ignore. Currently, 15 states are enforcing pro-life laws that ban or heavily restrict the killing of unborn babies in abortions, and more are fighting in court to do the same.
